Classsroom 2.0: What Is Web 2.0’s Role in Schools?

These are my notes to the “Classsroom 2.0: What Is Web 2.0’s Role in Schools?” at NECC 2009. This was a panel discussion. I captured the entire backchannel for this session as a PDF file. Thanks to Vicki Davis for setting up the backchannel in Chatzy!

Julie Lindsey: I covet the learning connections and networks which I make now as a result

Darren Draper: I use the Internet as an extension of my brain

Steve Hargadon
– is this a passing fad or a sea change? How big of a change is it?

David Jakes:
– it has potential to be a sea change, but if we just focus on tools it won’t amount to much
– citing article “Have you considered the Internet as literacy, as a context for reading, writing and communication”
– those things are timeless and we understand as
– better to talk about a new context to read, write and communicate, rather than talking about “web 2.0 tools”

Chris Lehmann:
– the notion of a collaborative, participatory culture is definitely out of the box
– no one is going to give that up once they’ve realized/experienced it

Sylvia Martinez:
– first step is to define web 2.0
– dictionary would say: a very specific way webpages handle entry and access
– what we have done is expanded the definition
– that is dangerous because we’ve expanded the meaning, to the point now that it can be meaningless

Darren Draper:
– evidence pointing to the idea it’s not a passing fad: this panel
– we have public and private, U.S. based and international

Steve Hargadon:
– audience, is it here to stay or passing fad?

Audience: “Here to stay”

Steve: “Cool.”

MY THOUGHT: HOPEFULLY THAT IS NOT THE INTELLECTUAL DEPTH OF THE CONVERSATION WE ARE GOING TO HAVE HERE. (I.E. WEB 2.0 IS COOL. WITH THE PANEL HERE I KNOW THAT WILL NOT BE THE CASE, THIS IS GOING TO BE A GREAT CONVERSATION

Chris Lehmann:
– we need a defined pedagogical conversation about this

Jakes:
– should focus on the skills: writing and collaboration, not the tools
– the tools are going to come and go

Julie Lindsey:
– web 2.0 has changed how people change their strategies for instruction in the classroom
– allows you to communicate, collaborate and create at different levels
– is transforming what we can do in the classroom

Darren:
– web 2.0 focus can bring in sharing, collaboration, and digital citizenship which may not be on our state core curriculum standards yet

Jakes:
– we are having those conversations throughout our school community
– we focus on intersection of literacy and technology, and what that means
– I like to ask, “What does it mean to be well educated in the 21st century?”
– we have moved away from information fluency, information literacy
– what does it mean for instruction when we are focusing on what it means to be well educated today?
– what changes does that invite/require in curriculum and assessment?

Lemann:
– transformation is taking ideas from Dewey, Connectivism ideas from Siemans, is a new paradigm
– what do these things mean for how we teach and learn?

Darren:
– interesting that I learned about Michael Jackson’s death via Twitter first
– our students are learning with these tools NOW whether we like it or not
– it makes sense to integrate and implement those technologies in the ways we teach

Sylvia:
– we have to fill the vacuum with appropriate ways to use these tools, or students will fill the void with inappropriate ways
– we need to point out the glib ways web 2.0 tools are sometimes “claimed” to be used (SMARTboards are not web 2.0 tools)
– ask “how is that student centered?” and “how does that empower the child?”
– web 2.0 can enable that renegotiation of the relationship between students and teachers

MY THOUGHT: AREN’T WE TIRED OF SAYING “IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TOOLS YET?!”

Vicki Davis:
– why do we need to have a Ning workshop to use Ning?

I AGREE WITH THAT. CELEBRATE OKLAHOMA VOICES IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF USING TOOLS CONTEXTUALLY TO ACCOMPLISH A TASK.

Workshop on “here’s how to use this tool” is less powerful than a workshop on “here is a core value of our school, and here is a way we can/are using tools to accomplish that” is better

Question

Jakes:
– what do you do when the walls around you become permeable
– this is a climate and culture issue
– how comfortable is the school letting students step outside those walls as they produce and publish content
– connections for schools begin locally
– learning community begins first, not just in a social way but also in an academic way

THIS REMINDS ME OF THE GORE-TEX CLASSROOM ANALOGY I DEVELOPED AWHILE BACK. GOOD METAPHOR.

Sylvia:
– you can’t convince others with words about the value of web 2.0 tools
– there is not a way to fight this in terms of trying to fight liability fears directly
– best way is to make these models of success as visible as possible

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE. AMPLIFYING SUCCESSES IS THE KEY. EXAMPLES ARE THE KEY.

Jakes:
– this is a school community issue
– this involves a group we don’t talk with often: the kids
– recently asked adults at a panel about how many have recently had conversations with their kids about what they know, are doing, etc online

Lehmann:
– simple things we don’t yet do: it’s mind boggling every school in America doesn’t have a listserv of all parents to send out the daily announcements
– we wrote a Moodle hack so parents could go to our website and find out the homework each day
– at EduCon conference we have students
– give students small reasons/steps to come into the school
– going from “I grew up in this community” to “my kids at school are talking to someone in Belize” is a huge leap

Sylvia:
– sometimes the horrible, legal AUP is the only thing we send home to parents
– messaging of technology has to be positive, constant, to the students
– if you are not bringing your students in as allies, you need to
– if kids are going home with the message you want to send, that will trump your AUP every time

Darren:
– asking what kind of efforts we are doing to try and teach our parents

THAT IS A GREAT QUESTION. SOMEONE SUGGESTED DOING SMALL, SHORT COFFEE CHATS FOR PARENTS AT SCHOOL VIA THE PTO/PTA.

Chris:
– At SLA we have a culture of laptops up / laptops down in class, we have talked about whether we need to do that at times in faculty meetings
– what do we want our kids to be able to do, and what tools can harness their ability to do those things?

Sylvia:
– to assume that kids don’t already have a backchannel in their heads already is a mistake
– having kids communicate about what they are doing, and the classroom experience, is a way to harness some of those energies
– often kids are buzzing in their heads and much of formal education is going over their heads now

Very impassioned comments by a participant (name I don’t know)
– point was: find tools LATER AFTER you set your goals
– disagree with the message “you have to use blogs, you have to use wikis”

Someone else: we are putting up walls now with laptop screens

Lehmann:
– we are focused on teaching communication skills, students are communicating with each other, organizations in our local community
– last year was “Change the World” project, last year was “Change Philadelphia” project, based on “think globally, act locally” mantra

Sylvia:
– this today is not a classroom, this is an experiment

Julie:
– I have seen this (backchanneling) work extremely well in classrooms, in conferences (for Flat Classroom conference), in different languages

Vicki:
– when you have a backchannel you need to have a moderator

THIS IS A COMMENT I MADE IN THE BACKCHANNEL:

I really push back on this idea that “we should never talk about the TOOLS.” It is ok to talk about the tools at times. We start with an awareness level knowledge of tools, move to a personal use, then go to the instructional level of use, both taking other’s ideas and inventing our own. It is a process. It is ok to talk about the tools. We shouldn’t feel guilty talking about the tools, esp with people who are not familiar with them AT ALL.

Jakes quoting Lehmann: “What is the worst consequence of your best idea?”

[…] Classroom 2.0: What is Web 2.0’s Role in Schools? I don’t know how Wesley Fryer managed to capture so much of the conversation in his notes (he obviously types faster than I do)? He does a great job summarising the key points from a panel discussion that included Chris Lehmann, Julie Lindsay, Darren Draper, David Jakes, Steve Hargadon and Sylvia Martinez. He also does a great job summarising the Tony Vincent presentation called Do So Much with an Ipod Touch. The amount of details in his posts is amazing. I suspect it has something to do with the meticulous way he prepared for NECC. […]

Wow!! Great capture of an exhaustive notes of the session, patience of putting them together is highly appreciated. What is interesting to see is most of the discussion around technology and education is around about teaching! As an educationalist, I’ve grown from being a teacher i.e., teaching and have now evolved into focus on providing the right environment for effective learning!

Just like anything else, there are only a few innovations in technology for education that are really useful and can make a difference. Think about it, many a times, what we discuss with other students end up being remembered longer and helps us understand better! A good list of tools would be the ones which will create an environment similar, collaboration is just one example.. take a look at a very popular online collaborative flash cards and especially the ‘funnel’, it is a great platform that creates an environment not only to collaborate also makes it interactive with videos, audio, etc. A greatest value of such platforms is it also creates plenty of freely available resources for study material.

A move towards creating the right environment can simulate multi-fold advantages!